It is known for a vehicle, such as a car, to have both a vehicle bus and a user bus. As known, typically the vehicle bus supports the various vehicle systems, such as an engine, instrument display, door locks, flashing lights, etc. Also, typically the user bus supports various user devices, such as a cell phone, a radio frequency ("RF") data device, a pager, a global positioning satellite ("GPS") receiver, etc.
As known, the vehicular bus contains various proprietary information and safety-related information such as, for example, an anti-theft system computer program or an anti-lock braking system computer program. As a result, generally the user bus is not directly coupled to the vehicular bus; instead, the user bus is coupled to the vehicular bus by means of a vehicular gateway.
Therefore, in order to provide user devices with the ability to communicate and interact with vehicle systems, it would be desirable to arrange the gateway with a method to transport vehicle information that is present on the vehicle bus to the user bus for the benefit of one or more target user devices. Further, in order to support enhanced user device applications, it would be desirable to provide the user devices with a method to program the gateway with various gateway "rules" which rules, in turn, would control the transport of the aforementioned vehicle information to the user bus.
As well, in order to provide vehicle systems with the ability to communicate and interact with user devices, it would be desirable to arrange the gateway with a method to transport user information that is present on the user bus to the vehicle bus for the benefit of one or more target vehicle systems. Further, in order to support enhanced vehicle system applications, it would be desirable to provide the vehicle systems with a method to program the gateway with various gateway rules which, in turn, would control the transport of the aforementioned user information to the vehicle bus.
As a result, there is a need for a method for a vehicular gateway to transport information, including a method for programming the gateway.